


Yuletide Carols in A Minor

by spirantization



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Christmas Music, Established Relationship, F/M, POV Lucifer, Step-Satan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21938473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spirantization/pseuds/spirantization
Summary: Lucifer is intimately acquainted with Hell, and even he can’t think of a worse punishment than to sit on horrid plastic chairs in a sea of bored suburban parents and be forced to endure whatever perverse rituals the children will enact in the name of celebrating Christmas.In which there's a lot of traffic, a holiday show in jeopardy, and a disgruntled Devil.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, Trixie Decker & Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 42
Kudos: 354
Collections: TDN's 2019 Secret Satan Exchange





	Yuletide Carols in A Minor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [XWingAce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/XWingAce/gifts).



> Written for the Deckerstar Network Secret Satan Exchange for xwingace. My prompts were: 1/ Octarine (https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Octarine) and / or 2/ "You'd better watch out, you'd better not cry. You'd better not pout, I'm telling you why: ..."
> 
> I ended up not using the first one, but I hope you enjoy what I did with the other!
> 
> Come say hi on Tumblr @spirantization. Happy Holidays!

It begins, as so many things do, with a phone call.

His eyes are drawn to the screen as it lights up with an incoming call — “ 😍 Detective  😍 ”. (He can be more imaginative with the emojis, but she expressively forbid any eggplants or tacos.). He takes a moment to admire her name on the screen before he answers.

“Hello, Detective,” he says. “Have you exhausted yourself on the doldrums of the endless sea of paperwork already?”

“What?” she replies, sounding distant and distracted. Never a good sign. “No, I’m calling to ask for your help.”

He sits up straight and puts down his glass. “That’s more like it,” he says, tweaking the lapels of his suit. “Is there a suspect in need of some mojo-ing? A baddie with a shotgun? An escaped mafia hitman?”

“There’s been a huge accident on the I-10,” she says. “Dan and I are stuck in traffic. We’ve barely gone a mile in forty-five minutes.”

“Right, before you accuse me of anything,” Lucifer begins, “I want to assure you that traffic is strictly a human invention. I am not responsible for the obscene amount that LA generates on a daily basis.”

“ _My point is_ ,” she says firmly, and oh, if that doesn’t give him the tingles. “We’re all the way across the city. We can’t make it there in time.”

“There?” he asks. Has he zoned out and stopped paying attention again, or is he just missing something vital? “Where is ‘there’? If you’re coming here, I assure you, I have no wish for Daniel to tag along.”

“Trixie is performing in the school band for the Christmas show,” comes the answer, along with a horrible sense of dread right before the request comes. “Can you take her there for me?”

A _Christmas_ show. Christmas is a confusing mish-mash of traditions and religions at best, and a horrific, glorified capitalistic nightmare at worst. The lights are a nice touch — Lucifer approves of the addition of lights to otherwise mundane objects like trees — but that’s about it. Christmas has few redeeming qualities, and it’s _everywhere_. The Detective and her offspring aren’t even Christian, so why they are socially pressured to participate in Christmas traditions is beyond him.

Plus, children — hundreds of screaming infants, opening their gaping maws to demand more and more and more from their hapless parents. Parasites, the lot of them.

Lucifer is intimately acquainted with Hell, and even he can’t think of a worse punishment than to sit on horrid plastic chairs in a sea of bored suburban parents and be forced to endure whatever perverse rituals the children will enact in the name of celebrating Christmas.

On the other hand, Chloe has asked him for help, and her offspring is obviously a step above the rest.

His silence must speak volumes to the Detective, who takes in a deep breath on the other end of the line. “Please, Lucifer?” she asks. “This means a lot to Trixie. She’s been practicing constantly. I know she’d be thrilled to have you there. And it would mean a lot to me, too.”

The Detective is lucky she’s a light in his cold, dark universe, because he would _not_ be doing this for anyone else.

“Fine,” he sighs. “What do I have to do?”

* * *

“Did you trip and fall headfirst into your closet?” Lucifer asks, looking at the child carefully. “Was this planned? You’d think that you’d have inherited both of your parents’ frightfully dull fashion sense.”

“I’m dressed as the Nutcracker,” says Beatrice, beaming up at him. “You know, like the ballet? It’s a uniform. Everyone in the band will be wearing one.”

Lucifer blanches; he hasn’t considered until this very moment the possibility that the little miscreants would be _matching_. It’s hard enough to tell them all apart as it is.

“Where’s mom and dad?” she asks, peering around him as if he’s hiding them behind his back.

“Stuck in traffic, I’m afraid,” he tells her. Her face falls slightly in disappointment, and he hastens to add, “They’re making their way directly to the school. I came to escort you there in advance.” He bows to her, extending a hand, and she giggles.

“Awesome!” she says. “Let me get my case.” She races back into her room, and comes back out a moment later with a small black case with a peeling pleather exterior and the number ’13’ stamped on the side. She sits down by the front door and starts pulling on a pair of shiny black shoes.

“What do you play?” he asks, pointing.

“Clarinet.”

“Oh, your poor mother,” he says. “Chop chop, we haven’t got all night — the show must go on and all that. Christmas waits for no one.”

“It’s not a Christmas show,” Beatrice says firmly with the air of something that has been said many times before. “It’s a _Holiday Celebration_. Because not everyone celebrates Christmas, and the show is for everybody.” She brightens. “Like you! Mom says you don’t celebrate Christmas, but this isn’t a Christmas show, so you can enjoy it too!”

“That is a slight leap in logic, child,” he informs her.

The little urchin — although not so little anymore, come to think of it — catapults herself out the door, leaving him to be the responsible Devil and turn off the lights and lock the door. He huffs about it all the way to the car, where Beatrice is already sitting behind the wheel.

“Can I drive?” she asks, blinking up at him with wide eyes. It may have an effect on her mother, but Lucifer is the Devil, and he is far above falling for such cheap tricks.

Her eyes are very large, however.

“Perhaps another time, when we’re not racing against the clock,” he tells her. She shuffles obediently over to the passenger seat and he opens the door and folds his considerable height into the low-slung car.

“Can we drive really, really fast?” she tries.

He’d be lying if he says that isn’t his preferred speed as well, even if the Detective would rather he drive five miles under the speed limit at all times. “Very well,” he says. “As long as you put your seatbelt on. Your mother will kill me otherwise.”

* * *

It’s worse than he could have ever possibly imagined.

He’s on the aisle, at least, a few rows from the front. The chair he’s sitting on is loose and lopsided, and rattles ominously every time he moves. He dares not even uncross his legs lest the whole thing collapse into a pile of metal and plastic and take him down with it. And how undignified that would be: the King of Hell, bested by a plastic chair. 

He’s surrounded my parents and grandparents, as well as a few unlucky siblings. A few are recording the proceedings on their phones — future blackmail material, perhaps? — and a few are looking bored. A man directly across the aisle from him has his arms crossed, his chin tucked against his chest, and appears to be deep in sleep. On his right is Barbara, who’s wearing too much perfume and is — as she’s informed him twice so far already — divorced.

There are children on stage who are struggling their way through a — play, perhaps? Lucifer hesitates to call what they’re doing acting, but he can’t imagine what else they would be doing up there.

At last the children head off-stage and the audience claps politely. Lucifer joins in half-heartedly as they shuffle their way back to the front of the stage to take a bow. There’s some unenthusiastic ‘woo’-ing. A few teachers bring out a bunch of chairs, and the band file into their seats. Beatrice takes her seat, catches his eye and waves enthusiastically. He lifts up a hand in reply.

“Oh, is she yours?” Barbara asks, leaning close to him. “My son is sitting right next to her! Isn’t that a cute coincidence? There’s my Benny!” She points out a boy with dark hair and a truly tragic haircut. He sees her pointing and deliberately averts his gaze, instead hunching over his clarinet and looking as if he wouldn’t mind sinking into the floor.

The music teacher lifts her hands, and from the band spills — well, one could charitably call it music. It has all the components of music, anyway: there are instruments being held and notes being played. The notes are not necessarily all being played at the same time, nor precisely in tune. Beatrice, he’s pleased to see, appears to be doing well, but he can’t say the same for the rest of them. A flautist in the first row is tapping her shoe determinedly on the off beat; a clarinetist is playing all her notes forte without any regard for phrasing; the tuba player in the back is an entire bar ahead of everyone else. Most of them don’t look at the conductor once. The whole thing results in a muddy rendition of — he checks the little pamphlet to be sure — “Let It Snow”.

They’re terrible. They’d make for a great torture device in Hell.

Lucifer is thinking about the logistics of torture via junior high school concert band when they begin “Jingle Bells”, which is marginally less terrible. Barbara whips out her phone beside him to record a video, and he follows suit; it’s just the sort of thing the Detective would like to see. If she hasn’t snuck in the back already, she would be happy to see her offspring perform. There is a lot of squeaking and squawking coming from the clarinet section — although to be fair to Beatrice, he doesn’t think she’s responsible for the majority of it.

The band fumbles their way through a few more songs, ending on “Deck the Halls” — thankfully, “Let It Snow” appears to have been the low point — before standing up and taking a bow to more applause from their no doubt relieved parents. Beatrice is grinning over at him, so he smiles and gives her a thumbs up. It’s obvious she’s the only good clarinetist in the bunch.

One of the teachers comes to the front of the stage with a microphone. She clears her throat. “We have a wonderful surprise for everyone,” she says, which is not how Lucifer would describe anything connected to the evening, unless it’s an announcement of the event’s sudden cancellation. “We now invite all students back to the stage for our choir performance,” she continues. “There is a slight change in the program, as our pianist was unable to make it tonight, so unfortunately there will be no piano accompaniment. Thank you for understanding.”

Barbara sighs beside him. “Such a pity,” she murmurs. All the children come back on stage and arrange themselves in rows, and the music teacher stands at the front to conduct them once again.

Lucifer leaps to his feet without any conscious thought. “Never fear,” he announces, striding forward. “These children won’t go without proper accompaniment, not if I have anything to say about it.” He extends his hand to the teacher. “Lucifer Morningstar.”

She takes his hand and stammers out a response. “How kind of you, but — you haven’t rehearsed with them —”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll be able to keep up with the little angels,” he says breezily, smiling at her. “We wouldn’t want the Christmas show to be anything less than perfect, would we?” He settles onto the piano bench and eyes the choir. They look slightly taken aback, but in that blank, dead-eyed way that many children seem afflicted with. The only one that matters is grinning, anyway, so it’s probably fine.

The music teacher clears her throat again. “The first song is “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”,” she whispers. “The sheet music is right there —”

“Don’t need it, love,” he tells her, beginning the song with a flourish.

The children come in a bit haphazardly, but manage to belt out, “You’d better watch out, You’d better not cry, You’d better watch out, I’m telling you why —”

They’re a bit shaky, so Lucifer figures the kindest thing to do is to join in and help them out a bit. 

“ — Santa Claus is comin’ to town,” they sing together.

When the song ends, the applause has a bit more life to it — well, naturally, it is Lucifer on the stage, and he’s never disappointed an audience in his entire life.

“Right, not bad,” he tells the children before they can start another song. “But I have notes. You —” he points out several culprits. “Stand up straight. All of you, open your mouths wider. And for goodness sake, come in on the beat.” He plays the downbeat a little more forcefully than usual to illustrate his point. “Got it?”

He receives a few blank lots but more of the children stand up straight and open their mouths, as if marvelling that they can open if at all.

“Next is “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”,” the music teacher mouths at him. He obligingly segues into the next song.

By the end, he wouldn’t call them virtuosos, but at least they are all standing up straight and their parents don’t sound defeated by ennui. He graciously stands up to receive applause when the music teacher motions to him, but flips his hands up in a gesture of “oh, stop it”. It’s all about the children, after all.

And then it’s finished, and Beatrice grabs his hand and hauls him offstage to where the Detective and Dan are waiting. She lets go of his hand to hug first her mother, then her father.

“Did you see me?” she asks excitedly, tugging on Daniel’s coat. Lucifer steps away from any potential disaster involving stretched clothes — there will _not_ be a repeat of Thanksgiving, thank you very much — a tucks himself just behind the Detective. For safety.

“We got here just in time,” Dan tells his offspring. “All your songs with the band and the choir. We didn’t catch the play, though.”

“Oh good, you didn’t miss anything,” Lucifer says softly in Chloe’s ear. She responds with a nudge to his side, but he can see the slightest curve of a smile on her mouth.

“You did great, monkey,” Chloe says.

“Lucifer did great, too!” chirps the little urchin. “We sounded really good with him on piano. He’s way better than Mr. Ralston.”

Chloe takes his hand and squeezes it. “You did great too, Lucifer.” The words settle, comfortable and warm, in his chest.

“Naturally,” he says, although it’s mostly to see Dan scoff and roll his eyes. He’s so easy to rile up it’s almost not fun anymore.

“You ready to go home, Trix?” Chloe asks.

“Yeah!” Beatrice says. “Wait, Daddy, you haven’t seen my poster I made for my science project yet.” She grabs him by the hand and hauls him over to a display of posters lined up against one of the walls.

Chloe turns to Lucifer. “Are you ready to go home?” she asks, swinging their joined hands a little.

He doesn’t tell her that she brought home with her when she arrived, or that he’ll happily go wherever she wants to; for starters, it’s horrifically sentimental and sappy, and secondly, those kind of sentiments don’t deserve to be spoken in a grade school auditorium. They’re better suited for quiet nights, and stargazing, and in those few brief seconds before dawn.

“Always,” he tells her instead, but the light in her eyes tell him that she understands what he means anyway.


End file.
